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F we could meet in privacy, Where no one else could see, Softly I’d whisper in thy ear This little word from me— ‘I’m dying, Love, for thee.’

Michimasa was a member of the Fujiwara family, who lived about the year 1030. He fell in love with the Princess Masako, a priestess of Ise; but when the Emperor heard of this, he put the Princess into confinement, where she was strictly guarded by female warders, and this verse was Michimasa’s request to her to try to arrange a private meeting with him. The words omoi-taenamu, which is the message he sends to her, mean, ‘I shall die of love’; but they can also mean ‘I shall think no more about you’; so perhaps he intended the verse to be read in different ways, according to whether it reached the Princess, or fell into the hands of her guards. In the picture Michimasa is shown outside the fortress, where the Princess is confined.